Marc Lore : Why 95% of Success is Just "Shit Work" | E181

24:33So how do entrepreneurs who are so desperate for funding, they just want it, how are they in a position, how can they get the confidence to say, who am I going to work for? Work with, I should say. No, as someone who has always struggled to raise money in every company, in every round, I've done, I think it's 15 rounds of venture capital. And each round is probably average over 100 pitches. So I'm probably 2 ,000 pitches in. It's always been so hard for me. And I've never, I can't remember a situation where I had multiple people to pick from, where I can say, you know what? I like you better. I'll take money from you.

25:11And I'm going to say no to you. I've never been in that position. Maybe because I've always pushed the envelope on wanting to push the size of the rounds and always been a little bit outside the box. But I'm not the right person to ask because I've never been in that situation. But if I was in a situation where I could pick, yeah, I think it would be really meaningful. I got very lucky. The VCs that are in my company, Wonder Now, were in – most of them were in my last two companies. And they're the best. and I feel very fortunate and lucky. Had they been different, probably wouldn't be here today.

25:48Let's step back again. I want to go back to your 11 years old. You somehow came up with this crazy idea that you're going to flip a coin 10 times. If it landed on heads or tails 10 in a row, you're going to get a Reggie Jackson baseball card. Now you and I are the same age. I'm 56. You're 56? 54. 54. Okay. Well, we're near the same age. Reggie Jackson was probably the most famous baseball player ever. And as a Yankees fan. As a Yankees fan. And so I grew up a Tigers fan, but I still loved Reggie Jackson, except when they were playing the Tigers. Tell us what happened to that card and what lessons you learned and took from that experience that have helped you in your career.

26:26Well, just to set up, I remember it like it was yesterday. It was in the bathroom in school. I had to be around 10 years old. I was very good at flipping cards. You'd flip them and try to land all on heads. I was under the impression that we're going to each flip 10 cards and whoever got more heads. I was flipping and it was heads, heads, heads, heads, heads, heads, tail, heads. He's like, tail, you lose. I'm like, no, no, you didn't go yet. It's like, no, you had to get all 10 in a row. Otherwise I went. I'm like, that's not what we said. But he took the card. He was a bully, took the card. And then that was it.

27:01And I went to the teacher and said, hey, we did this thing. And she's like, I don't know. I'm not going to get involved. And I still remember that to this day that it was, and why I despise bullies, I think. So yeah, it was my first experience of dealing with a bully, basically. And he was much bigger than me and older and, you know, and I still remember it. And I don't like bullies to this day. Bullying when we were younger was a different kind of a thing, you know, it was, okay, don't do that today you get kicked out of school. And it's very interesting. Oh, no. Back then it was very different.

27:36Yeah. Very different. Someone's making fun of Randy, calling me retarded. We're Randy. Don't do that. And I come home crying every day. It'll happen the next day at school. It was, I mean, yeah, very different. It was very different. You know, some ungodly percentage of mass shooters were bullied. I think the number is 85, 90%. Wow. Which doesn't surprise you when you really think about it. Yeah. There's nothing worse than being bullied. Let's go to seventh grade. I think when you're a little different than most, you're reading books that people are not reading. Seventh grade, you're reading books on options and derivatives, which a lot of people don't read until they graduate college and they're in business school.

28:18And so how did that come about? And how would you find a book on options or derivatives when you're 12 years old? So I know. So I said before, I don't read novels, but I did like reading like textbooks and like like option derivative books I was fascinated with. Yeah, we would even maybe go on vacation and I would like try to find the bookstore and go in there and see. And they would sell in bookstores, they would sell like books on derivatives, options, derivatives. I would always get a book and just read it and read it very closely, like one page, think about it, try some problems, flip a page.

28:52I really like at a young age mastered options trading at, at 13 years old. And I was just obsessed with it. Back then, you couldn't trade. You couldn't go on Fidelity. There was no Robinhood. So were you actually trading for an account or was all more in your mind? All in my head. When I got a little older, like in high school, I got my dad to open up an account where you could sell covered calls, which is the most basic form of option trading. But that was also super fun. Can you explain to everyone what a covered call is? Covered call is when you buy a stock, let's say you buy a share of stock at$100 a share, you can sell somebody the ability to buy your stock at, let's say,$110 at some point in the future.

29:34They would pay you, let's say,$1 for that right. So if the stock never gets to$110, you just keep the dollar. So you own the stock at$100, you keep the dollar, it never gets to$110. If it gets above$110, you're forced to sell it at$110 and you still keep the dollar. So the worst case is you have to sell the stock at 111. So I thought as a kid, I was always fascinated by this. I'm like, this is amazing because I would love to sell it at 110. So if it gets there, fine. But if it doesn't, I keep the dollar. And that was sort of like the original excitement around options as a kid in high school. And yeah, we do that.

30:10But nothing risky in options at that age until I started a hedge fund in college and then did more of the risky options and derivatives and stuff. I grew up in Detroit, Windsor, Canada, right across the border. We'd drive through the tunnel. And back then, you couldn't get these fake IDs, which all the kids do now. And they're made in China. The barcode works. Right. I've seen them. Someone I just. Very impressive. I just heard, Mark, from one of my kids' friends that it passed TSA last year, one of the cards that they made, which is just remarkable. We were using colored pencils back in the day, and we'd get someone who was ridiculous.

30:54And we'd go to Windsor, which the drinking age was 19, and it was like, okay, we had a beer or so. You hate beer, but you want to be cool and drink that beer. the one place you cannot use a fake ID is Las Vegas in a casino. It's a bet. And I took my son, we did a podcast with Sugar Sean O'Malley. He was the champ. And he said, hey, I'm having this party and I forget what nightclub it was. And so, yeah, come. We come with his posse. Charlie's excited. He's 19 years old. He's got the fake ID. And we got there around midnight and I said, hey, this is fake. Normally, they would take the ID and you'd get on a restricted list and you couldn't come back to the casino for some amount of time.

31:40That's how strict it is. But on the flip side, my wife, who's a beautiful woman, was going to Vegas 22 years ago, 18 years old, no one checking her ID. So I think there's a little inequity going on there. Tell us about what you were doing in Atlantic City casinos and where you were buying these suits from. Well, let me also tell you about the ID, since you asked about ID, because me and my friend spent an entire summer deconstructing all the elements of a license into a big board. And it was basically the exact size that if you put your head in front of the white part and took a picture and then cut the picture out, it would be the exact size of a license.

32:25And that took an entire summer. It was so hard to make, especially like the different seals and things. But we had the ability then, yeah, you just take a picture and anybody can have a license. We just changed the name on the board with the different letters and date of birth and take a picture. You were counting cards, which is great for you bad for the casinos how much money did you make doing that before you got booted i don't know if i want to how much i want to talk about this a lot of money a lot of money uh statute of limitations has run out a lot of money a lot of money um let's talk about well i'll tell you a funny thing about fake id so i take my kids away on one-on-one trips every year.

33:16For all the parents out there who want to do something amazing, one of the best things I've done as a dad, especially as your kids get teenage years where you're competing for their time, is take your kids on a one-on-one trip. It's the best thing I've ever done. You're not competing with their friends as much. You're not competing with their phone as much, although they're on their phone. So I took my twin girls to Cabo. How old? They were 16. Okay. And we were going to Chileno Bay. And we were staying at Chileno Bay. Discovery Property. Mike Maldon was on my show. If you haven't listened to that show, it's a great show.

33:52And I'm in first class, and I hear some guy in front of me talking about Calvin Harris is playing at this hotel, opening the hotel. And I said, oh, you know, Calvin's playing? He said, oh, yeah. And my wife, one of her best friends had dated Calvin. Okay. And so, and I knew his manager because for our bachelorette and bachelor party, we did a night solo in Vegas, my wife and I. And then last night we were in Calvin's DJ booth for the night. So I knew Calvin's manager, Mark Gillespie, who's a great guy. And so I call Mark and I say, hey, Mark, I'm with my kids. You know, we'd like to go to this.

34:32He said, no, no, no. This is a hotel thing. the government's going to be there, the minister or whatever of Cabo is going to be there. It's 21. They're strict. Can't do it. I said, okay, huh, interesting. So we're in the SUV going to Chileno Bay, and the driver's listening to me. Basically, I said, hey, Mark, you've got to do this for me. This has to happen. And so the driver, I hang up on the phone. I said, hey, what's going on? What do you need? I said, well, I need fake IDs for these kids to get into Kellen Harris. He said, okay, let me work on it and I'll call you back. So he calls me back at 3.30 and he says, I can pick you up, but you have to be at the police station by five.

35:12He was going to get actual Mexican driver's license to get fake IDs so we could go to Calvin Harris. I'm thinking there's no way that is happening. But I did figure out a way to get them and they were in the Calvin and Harris, DJ Booth, we were hanging out with them for the night. Resourcefulness definitely pays. Let's talk about odd jobs we all have in school. And we can talk about things moving on later. But I want to talk about picking weeds and doing manual labor. I feel like in today's society, so many kids don't want to do that, right? I knock door to door. I want money. Hey, can I pick weeds?

35:58Some people would say, sure. They'd see this 14, 15-year-old kid. I'd sit there in the baking sun. I'd pull weeds, blisters on my fingers. You had a lot of those odd jobs too. So in today's society, I feel like people don't want those jobs. They don't want them when they're younger and they don't want them as they grow up, even in the college years. What's your advice to all those people who look down upon the odd jobs? Should they take them? And is the experience better than getting some other job in a store or somewhere else? I mean, just like you, same thing. Weeds, shoveling snow, car wash, newspaper, recycling, baseball.

36:38I mean, I basically would work as hard as people would allow me to work. And I do think that's great training if you want to be an entrepreneur because you have to be prepared for 100-hour weeks, intense, over many, many years. So I think it's great training ground. I think if you're not willing to do that sort of hard work, you're going to fold, I think, as you get older. I don't think this idea that, oh, no, but that's manual and this is now I'm using my brain. Entrepreneurship's more closely aligned to manual labor than it is to some sort of cerebral thing. I mean, it is tough. Unless you're just sitting in a closet coding or something.

37:21But if you're in a business that has like a physical product or service or things, especially the service, service, forget it. You're running around like crazy. I mean, you're working harder than pulling weeds, especially in the early days. And if it's a product, you're constantly on the move doing stuff. So I think it's great training. It's just like anything. I mean, if you were going to learn like a martial art or something, right? I mean, before you start going into competitions, you're doing the basic technique and form. And it's boring. It's hard, right? It's like a little bit of that. It's like you're building the foundational capabilities, I think, as a kid and what it means to work hard.

37:56I do a lot of mentoring. I do a lot of paid coaching now as well, which I just I love doing. It's fun and fulfilling for me. And one of the things that people just don't get today is they don't want to do what I call the shit work. And if people saw the work I do every day, you know, oh, Randy Akamai, co-founder. Oh, look at these all these great investments that he did. And by the way, I talk more about my failures than the wins because I do think we learn more from our failures than the wins. But what I tell people, man, you know, 95 % of my day is shit work. It's not exciting. It's boring. And by the way, they don't want to do the work that I'm doing.

38:32You know, they do 30 minutes. Oh, gosh, you know, this is really boring. Give me something else. I'm like, no, that's not how it happens. Yeah. It's like a holiday. This thing with you right now, 90 minutes of the week, this is the easiest part of my week. because just like you, most of the week you're doing the grind, right? I remember at diapers.com, like literally going to the wholesale clubs and having to buy thousands of boxes of diapers, physically carry them to the checkout, check them out, put them on the truck, bring them home, wrap them up, ship them. I mean, that was a lot of weed picking.

39:09Let's get into some of the details on this because I just want to share with people, Procter & Gamble would not sell to you. So your parents would go into Costco in these clubs with an 18-wheeler in the parking lot, and you would basically be buying them at Costco, which is an incredible story. Resourcefulness rules the day as an entrepreneur. You have to do it. But that's an amazing story for people, I think. Where did you rent the 18-wheeler to put all the diapers? Well, it didn't start with that. First, it started car, then van, then truck. And then we had to take them all through checkout.

39:43So we couldn't buy pallets and things like that. And we had to take them all through checkout. You had to pay a credit card and go through the receipt. And it was just brutal. We realized that the manager wanted us to keep some diapers there. And the deal was, if you leave me some diapers, I will use the forklift and put pallets on a truck for you. Then we're like, yes, we can, you know. So then that's where we rented an 18-wheeler. And we didn't drive, but we had somebody come. And then they put it on the truck. And that was a big breakthrough. We were clearing out five, six clubs a week, maybe even more than that at that time.

40:20And it was untenable. We couldn't keep buying diapers at one price and then selling them for a loss online because we were selling them for a lower price. Or actually, we were selling them for the same price that we paid in the club, but obviously had all the shipping and fulfillment and all those other costs. We're losing money on every box of diapers we sold. And that was only sustainable for so long. All right. Let's talk about the concept of loss leaders. And I think that's what you're getting to. You're losing money on the diapers, but you're trying to sell moms different products with higher margins.

40:52At Costco, for example, for$1.50, you get a hot dog and a drink and they sell 130 million dogs a year. And it's a loss leader because the average ticket there, they don't tell you exactly what it is,$100 to$120. Is loss leader a good strategy for a company that wants to succeed and grow in the future? I think it can be, if done right, if it's strategic. So the thinking was, when we first learned, we didn't know anything about retail. We were asking why diapers weren't sold online. And everyone told us, well, because it's expensive to ship, they're heavy, and plus they're a loss leader in the store, so you can't make money online.

41:29And I was like, okay, well, well, why are they a loss leader in the store? Why don't the stores make money on them? Oh, because they drive parents, new parents into the store to get their diapers. And when they come in every month to get their diapers, they wind up buying everything else. And so even though it's a loss leader for them, it still makes sense. I said, huh. And how many products can they buy in the store? Like, wow, the biggest store is like a Walmart that could be 100 ,000 products. I was like, huh. But online, there's millions or tens of millions or hundreds of millions. So wouldn't that mean you can lose more money on the diapers online because you have more products to upsell?

42:06And everybody was always, I remember just asking that question. Because when you start and come up with an idea, it's like a piece of clay and you want to mold it. And I always tell people, just tell everyone your idea and just listen to what they say. And when you get to a place where the answers that you're getting back aren't compelling, you know, you might have something. And I remember we got to this point where I was just telling everyone, friends, family, everyone, people in the industry, people that know retail, people that know diaper market, just asking everyone. And nobody had an answer to it.

42:35They were just like, no, you're not going to be able to make money. But why? If there's 100 times as many products online and the stores could lose money, why can't we lose more money? And I kept doing it over and over and over and over. Finally realized, no, this is right. We can make this work. We can lose more money on diapers than the stores do. And we can upsell more products online, higher margin. So that was like the original hypothesis that proved to play out. We'll talk about the sale in a few minutes. But I want to go back. You have an acuity for numbers. You were called the human calculator by your classmates.

43:16And I want to talk about a dinner you had with Sonia. And I'm going to butcher her last name, Guardo. and then I'm going to ask you what day of the week is it November 22nd year 2032. 2032? Yes. You're just going to pull this out right here? Right here. That's on the spot, huh? Right there. That would be, what day you said, November what? November 22nd. I think it would be a Monday, 2032. So tell us about the dinner and where this incredible, unique... Can we see if it's a Monday for you? Yeah, okay, we're going to wait for the Monday. We're going to cut this part of the podcast. It's a Monday.

43:53That's insane. It's a Monday? November 22nd? Yeah. It's a Monday. Insane. That was under a lot of pressure. That is insane. What's going on here? That was under a lot of pressure. What is going on? That's crazy. Okay, so tell us about the dinner with Sonia. And then where did this insane skill come from? So like I said, I started as a self-student mechanism to just count and do multiplication. I used to be able to do crazy multiplication, division things in my head. And then I just realized that there is a formula that's quite a long formula on how to calculate the day of the week for any day in history.

44:34And I learned that formula and then sort of did it enough times that it sort of stuck. So now when I hear numbers, like when you tell me the dates, I don't really run through the full calculation. I sort of hear it. And if I just give myself like a second, it'll do the calculation and spit out the day. So it's just – I can't explain it. It's just something that is – I don't know. You mentioned you were an average student. Low average. Low average. Well, let's talk about the eight out of 100 you got on a biology test in school. So how important is failure and embarrassment as a motivator to being better and doing better?

45:22It could be a pretty good motivator. It wasn't that case for me because it was very embarrassing. The teacher, this is crazy back then, but the teacher would call out the highest grade and the lowest grade by name. So not cool. It's so not cool. I remember. And you would do it with a lot of like with a smirk, you know, and the lowest grade with an eight, you know, is Mark Lurie. It's like, and Peppermint's laughing. This is like, it's amazing that people would laugh, you know, when they named, especially with such a low score. And I did find it very embarrassing. And it was an incredible motivator because the next test, I got the highest score.

46:04And so I was not going to be embarrassed, even though I was quite comfortable failing and not getting the best grades. I didn't even know you needed to apply to college until junior in high school. I thought you just picked the school you want to go to and you go. So I was never like in the whole academic realm, I guess. You know, my parents didn't know either. One of the goals of this show is to make the impossible possible. And that's also true of my coaching and my mentoring that I do. You were fascinated by magicians and mentalists when you were younger. So tell us about where that came from and how that motivate you.

46:46And then tell us about the Summer League and Nathan Knight. Okay. So, yeah, I've always been fascinated with magic, similar to being entrepreneurship in my DNA. Like the love for magic I was kind of born with because as a little kid, all I wanted during any birthday was one of those magicians to come. I wanted a magician set for Christmas. Like I just loved it. I was fascinated by the idea that making the impossible possible, similar to like an entrepreneurship, like in the DNA, something people don't believe is possible and then you can make possible. That feeling of amazement and surprise when somebody can't figure out how it's done and it feels surreal, right?

47:29It feels magical. And I just loved feeling it myself and then I loved the thought of other people having that same feeling. and that's sort of the feeling I get as an entrepreneur sometimes too. So it's very, very similar. Oz Perlman, the mentalist, is going to be on my show on Wednesday. We're filming it right here in the studio. Amazing. So I'm super pumped about that. Oh, that's amazing. I think people are just going to be shocked at what he's done and what he's managed to accomplish. Yeah, that'll be a fun one. That'll be really good. You were the first person in your family to go to college.

48:02You went to Bucknell. We can talk about the track and you're kind of set a state record in the 300-yard dash. But what I really want to talk about at Bucknell is we all have different reasons for going to college. When I was growing up, no internet, no YouTube, no AI, no chat GPT. It was the same with you. So your parents, my parents said, you're going to college. It was never thought that I wouldn't go to college. If you didn't go to college where I came from, something was wrong with you. Today, my son is a senior in college, and he gets to college. He said for a while, Mark, he said, I don't want to go to college.

48:49And his mom and I said, well, where are you going to live? I'm going to live with you. No, you're not going to live with us. You're going to go to college. And eventually, when you tell your kids something, they're going to push back on you, right? And then eventually, he came around and said, yeah, I do want to go to college. The social experience in college of living away from home and making these lifelong friends, I think, is invaluable. But in today's day and age, you can learn anything. And when he got to college, Mark, he said to me, you know, I'm bored. I'm not learning a lot. And are the professors at my school people who can't make it in the real world?

49:23There's some perception like that. That's not always true. It may be true sometimes. I think college is really important in the development of us academically, intellectually, emotionally, and then the social connections are incredible. Is college necessary today with all the tools we have on YouTube, AI, where you can basically teach yourself whatever you need and focus on a specific area that you're actually interested in doing? Yeah. I mean, there are compelling cases where it might not make sense, but I think in general, Like you said, there is a bit of maturity that happens, personal growth of like it's the first time for many people that they're away from their family and from their parents.

50:05And spending those four years in sort of this transition environment where you're learning to spread your wings, be on your own, take care of yourself, make your own decisions. I think it's a nice transition for people. And like you said, you're also at the same time learning. You're learning, but also learning how to learn, which I think is even more important. And of course, the friendships. Friendships that many people have for the rest of their lives. So I think there's a lot of benefits. I would definitely be in favor of it for sure. And both my daughters were continuing after college with postgraduate school.

50:51So, you know. You worked on Wall Street after you graduated Baker's Trust, Credit Suisse, Sanwa Bank. A lot of students and graduates think Wall Street's a great thing to do. The experience, the finance, the connections. Is that a good path to becoming an entrepreneur? So you may be learning something more about financial acuity and numbers. or is your advice to go into something else where you're interested in it or learning and shouldn't just go into a field because people are telling you it's really gonna help you? Yeah, this is, I mean, I know entrepreneurs that have started in all different fields.

51:27So there's no, like, if you wanna be an entrepreneur, go to this path. Sure, in banking, you'll learn numbers, but you'll learn numbers just about anywhere you go. You're gonna learn spreadsheets and have to deal with numbers in some way or another in most jobs. I think, honestly, and I tell people this, it's follow your passion. Follow your passion. What do you love to do? You're going to be doing it 200 and what is it, 240 days a year kind of thing. And you're going to be working long hours. Make sure it's something you love. And if you do love it, you're going to wind up learning a lot more than if you don't.

52:04And the learning, a lot of it's through osmosis, though, just being around colleagues, your boss, leader, learning how they think, learning the culture of the organization, learning how to operate within an organization, potentially after a few years managing people. Like there's a lot of skills that I think are very important for an entrepreneur that you can get in any company. But I do think the person you work for is number one. And then number two would be the culture of the organization. So if you work with somebody that you really respect and can learn from, and it's within a company that has a very good culture, you'll learn a lot about what it takes to create a similar culture in your startup.

52:49Because at the end of the day, culture is everything. Like if you have a great culture, you can recruit great people and get the best they've got to give because they're motivated and happy working in the company. Then you can do just about anything.

53:22you